


terrors to freeze your soul

by AceofWands



Series: Avengers Trek Anthology [3]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Star Trek, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Trek Fusion, Blood and Violence, Can be read standalone, Crossover, Gen, Star Trek Context Notes Provided, The Borg, Trills
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-04
Updated: 2019-02-04
Packaged: 2019-10-22 07:08:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17658281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AceofWands/pseuds/AceofWands
Summary: The voices of the Collective began to buzz in the back of his mind. They were slow, like molasses, confused. He felt like he was in a room with hundreds of people who had just woken up after a wild night and weren’t quite sure where they were or how they got there.





	terrors to freeze your soul

**Author's Note:**

> Finally uploading a fic series that has been on my harddrive since 2014. The original draft of this fic was written pre-AOU.
> 
> Avengers/Star Trek crossover that reimagines the Marvel characters as part of the classic Star Trek universe.
> 
> This is set about 3 years after "The Best of Both Worlds" and 1 year after "I, Borg", but before the events of "Descent".
> 
> Title from TNG episode "Q Who?", from Q's speech to Picard: "Picard, you are about to move into areas of the galaxy filled with wonders you cannot possibly imagine. And terrors to freeze your soul!"
> 
> Set in 2369.
> 
> Star Trek context notes:  
> Joined Trill are primarily featured in Deep Space Nine in the characters of Jadzia Dax and Ezri Dax. They are a species made up of a humanoid host (with spots running down either side of their body) and a large worm-like symbiont. Joining is considered a great honour and is extremely competitive. Hosts are joined to a symbiont in their early to mid-20s and removing the symbiont after the initial joining period kills the host, so they remain joined until the host's natural death. The symbiont has their own personality but also retains the memories and personality of every host they have been joined to, so that a joined Trill becomes an amalgamation of all the previous hosts and the current one - they are considered a new person (and this is reflected in the host taking the symbiont's name as their surname).
> 
> The Borg are a cybernetic race made up of humanoids that have been forcibly assimilated through the injection of nanoprobes that links them to the hive mind of the Collective. Their free will is suppressed (though they will remain conscious of what is happening, even if they cannot act) and they become drones that carry out the will of the Collective. Mechanical components are integrated into their bodies to give them the necessary tools to work, and they regenerate instead of sleeping. Their ships are geometric in shapes, most notably the Borg cube, sphere, and diamond.
> 
> The Battle of Wolf 359, depicted in "The Best of Both Worlds", took place in the Wolf sector, eight lightyears from Earth, when the Federation attempted to fend off a single Borg cube attempting to invade Earth. The Borg were led by Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Enterprise-D who had been assimilated and forced to become Locutus of Borg. The entire fleet of 39 Starfleet ships were destroyed. The cube was ultimately destroyed, and Picard recovered, by the Enterprise-D.

 

“Let me get this straight. You want me to go against the explicit orders of our captain, who received his orders directly from the highest levels of Starfleet Command, all because of a ‘bad feeling’?” Tony Stark demanded, eyebrow raised.

Lieutenant Pepper Potts bit her lip, her eyes wavering with doubt at his question. But before she could reply, and probably rescind her request, Tony had already barrelled on. “Ha, I’m just messing with you Pep. You know I’ve never had any reason to doubt you.” His fingers were already dancing over the console in front of him, adeptly bypassing security protocols and layers of encryption like they were children’s games, as he rambled on. “Besides, you’re not the only one who has … concerns about the Captain’s orders. Something doesn’t feel right. Hasn’t since the moment we entered this sector. And taking Hammer with him, but not anyone else? Honestly, I should have done this the moment he gave us such questionable orders. But you tend to give Starfleet captains the benefit of the doubt, you know?”

Beside him, Pepper wrung her hands together. Tony had never seen her so on edge – not even after that time that he’d convinced her to join him and Rhodey for that infamous shore leave on Risa. He’d never forget the look on Captain Stane’s face. Literally, he’d never be able to forget – sure, he might misplace some memories every now and then, but they always turned up eventually, and Pepper trying to maintain her composure even while wearing _that_ on the Bridge. Or should he say, _not_ wearing-

“We’re in!” he exclaimed, his internal chatter stopping instantly. “Let’s see what was so important that it had to be classi … fied … By the First. Pepper, tell me I’m hallucinating this.”

He gripped the edge of the console so hard his knuckles turned white. Pepper let out a gasp. He re-read the orders from Starfleet that he’d just decrypted, praying they’d be different this time.

 _“We repeat, under no circumstances is the_ Resilient _to engage the Borg. Retreat from Sector 2356 immediately and report to Starbase 185 for debriefing.”_

For a long, long moment neither of them said anything. Tony eventually dragged his gaze away from the damning words on the monitor to look at Pepper, who stared back with absolute terror.

Then they both fell back on their training as Starfleet officers and sprang into action.

“Potts to Rhodes, meet me in the Captain’s ready room immediately,” Pepper said into her commbadge, already making her way out of Engineering as she spoke.

“Lieutenant Valerez, you’re in charge until I get back. Prepare to take us to warp as soon as you hear the order – and it’s not gonna be an easy ride, so be ready,” Tony said, walking backwards as he spoke.

For a moment it looked like Valerez was going to argue (that’s what he got for choosing so many smartasses for his engineering team), but he gave her his patented Stark serious face and she immediately closed her mouth and nodded.

He strode quickly to catch up to Pepper, ducking into the turbolift a second before its doors closed.

“I assume you have a plan?” Pepper asked, as they rose towards the bridge.

He nodded thoughtfully, chewing on his lower lip. “I do. I’ll give you as many details as I can before I go, but I need someone to coordinate things over here, and I think that person should be you,” he said, mildly.

“Before you … go? Tony, no! You’re in command! You can’t-“ Pepper’s distraught tone was cut off by the turbolift doors swooshing open onto the bridge. He gave her a pointed look over his shoulder before he stepped out, to which she pursed her lips, colour rising to her cheeks.

Tony strode out calmly, Pepper hot on his heels. They ignored the curious looks of the crew, tensely watching from their stations. “As you were Lieutenant Hogan,” Tony told Happy, who has risen from the centre seat as soon as Tony had entered. “I still need you here for the moment.”

Happy nodded, but couldn’t help an uneasy glance at the viewscreen where the dark green, diamond-shaped vessel loomed ominously.

“Oh good, you’re here already,” Tony said, as he crossed the bridge to the door to the Captain’s ready room. Rhodey stood in front of it, looking tense.

“What have you-“ Rhodey began, but Tony shushed him, grabbing him by the shoulder and pushing him into the room ahead of him.

Tony approached the Captain’s desk, but couldn’t bring himself to face it for more than the few seconds it took to swing the desk monitor around and link it to his station in engineering. His stomach churned and he pressed his hand over his abdominal pouch, seeking reassurance. Stark reminded him that they’d faced situations like this before and gotten through, they just had to hold it together and do the best they could to keep the crew safe.

Tension leaked in from the bridge, reinforced by the constant strobe of red lighting. At least the alarm wasn’t still going off, that thing could drive you nuts.

“Okay, what did you find?” Rhodey asked, breaking the silence that had settled on the room.

Tony met Pepper’s gaze as he turned to face them both, but she was clearly deferring to his rank here. Or his age and the wisdom that was supposed to come with it, he could never tell which.

“The Captain lied,” he said, surprised to find his voice steady. “There was no classified mission. Starfleet didn’t order us here – in fact, they ordered the exact opposite.”

Rhodey looked like he’d been sucker punched. “You’re- you’re sure?”

Tony stepped aside, gestured to the monitor. Rhodey visibly gulped before stepping closer to read the communique.

Pepper moved smoothly to stand beside them both. “I watched Tony break the encryption. The orders are genuine.”

“I don’t believe this. _Why_ would he-“ Rhodey began, and something in Tony snapped.

“I don’t know why! And it doesn’t matter what his reasons were – our number one priority is to get this crew out of here.”

Rhodey swallowed heavily but nodded straight away. “Of course, sir.”

Tony straightened up. His plan had solidified in his mind, but neither Pepper or Rhodey were going to like it. He hated to pull rank, or age, on them, but he wasn’t going to let them talk him out of this.

“Pepper, you’re in command. We have no reason to assume the Borg will follow if we retreat, but we also have no reason to assume they won’t – so expect the worst. Get a message out to Starfleet Command advising them of our situation. They might need to assemble a fleet in a hurry – so if you are pursued … be prepared to head away from Federation space, to buy them some time.”

Tony paced back and forth, his hands dancing through the air as he spoke, as if he was manipulating holographic controls. It wasn’t a habit he’d had before he’d been Joined.

“Rhodey, we might need some creative thinking to get the Borg off our tail. Brush up on everything Starfleet has on them – especially the logs from the Enterprise-D. Coordinate with Valerez in Engineering, I’ve left her in charge. Understood?”

When he finally turned to face them Pepper looked absolutely furious, while Rhodey’s expression was wary and confused.

“Understood,” Rhodey agreed, tentatively, looking between Tony and Pepper, “But why-“

“There is no way you’re going over there,” Pepper interrupted, picking back up on the argument they’d started in the turbolift. She closed the distance between them and looked him straight in the eyes. “Do you hear me Tony Stark? No. Way.”

Tony tried to give her one of Howard’s most charming smiles. “It’s sweet that you think you have any say in this.”

Pepper’s hand shot out faster than he could react, fingertips digging into his upper arm. “This isn’t a joke Stark! I am not letting you throw your lives away.”

Tony dropped the smile. “I’m sorry Pep, but I’m one hundred percent serious about this. Someone needs to buy the _Resilient_ time to get away, and there is no way I’m going to order anyone else over there.”

“Buy us time – _that’s_ your plan? A suicide mission?” Rhodey asked, striding forward to crowd in next to Pepper.

Tony rolled his eyes at that, pulling away from Pepper’s grip. “What do you both take me for? That’s the worst case scenario. No, I’ll spare you the intricate details, but suffice to say, Plan A is to find a way to sabotage the Diamond, grab Stane and Hammer, and get the hell out of there.”

“Grab Stane?” Pepper asked, surprised, her fury momentarily abated by her confusion.

Tony’s gaze hardened, “If either of them are still alive. They must have gone over there with some sort of plan – I need to find out what it was.”

Rhodey threw his hands up, exasperated. “What happened to ‘it doesn’t matter why’?”

Tony scoffed. “I meant that it doesn’t matter for the rest of the crew, obviously. They’re my main priority, which is why I have to do this alone,” he said this last part pointedly, anticipating their next point.

Rhodey sighed, “I hate it when you’re right.”

“What?” Pepper glared at him, betrayed. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing.”

Rhodey gave her a sympathetic look. “Pepper, you know he’s right. We can’t just abandon our Captain and First Officer, not when we don’t know what they’re even doing over there. But we also can’t risk any more of the crew on what could very well turn out to be a suicide mission.”

Pepper’s lips thinned in disapproval, but she didn’t voice any more objections.

Rhodey placed a hand on Tony’s shoulder, leaning down to tell him, “I should be the one to go. You have Stark to think about.”

Tony shook his head, his throat feeling thick as he reflect on how lucky he was to have made such loyal, wonderful friends in this lifetime. “Sorry buddy, but I’m the only one who can pull off the plan I have in mind. Need you to hold down the fort until I get back.” He placed his hand over Rhodey’s on his shoulder and squeezed it gently.

He turned to Pepper, who was scowling at him so hard he thought her jaw might crack. She leaned in and gave him a hug. “You’d better make it out of there Tony, or else I’m gonna have to kick your ass,” she hissed in his ear as she squeezed him even tighter.

“That goes for both of us Stark,” Rhodey added from his other side.

Tony allowed himself a moment to capture the memory, knowing that Stark would hold onto it extra tightly for him. If this was their last happy memory, he wanted it to be a good one.

~

“Are you still sure about this Tony?” Pepper asked, waiting anxiously in front of the transporter console. She’d insisted on beaming him over herself, and he wasn’t about to argue with her.

“Yep. Just get it over with Pep, the sooner you beam me over, the sooner I can get back,” he said, winking. As soon as they’d left the Captain’s ready room and he’d gone to gather everything he needed for his plan, he’d slipped back into his usual charming persona. If this was going to be the last time he saw Pepper or Rhodey this was how he wanted them to remember him.

Watching Pepper roll her eyes at him, a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of her lips even as her eyes were suspiciously bright, he knew he’d made the right choice.

He raised his hand up, modified tricorder clutched within it, and saluted her. “Permission to disembark, Lieutenant Potts?” he asked cheekily.

Her smile blossomed fully even as her eyes rolled around again. “Energizing,” she said, ignoring his usual antics. Her hands slid along the transporter controls deftly, stilling for only a second over the final motion. “Good luck Tony,” she said, just as the transporter beam engulfed him.

When Tony’s vision returned he was surrounded by sickly green light. He let out a shaky breath, trying to keep himself calm and focused.

In his right hand he held a phaser at the ready, while his left held the modified tricorder, which he now flicked open with a practised hand to begin scanning for Starfleet commbadge signals.

The phaser was the only weapon he’d brought with him. There was no way he’d be able to take out a Diamond full of drones with brawl alone, so brains it was. Lucky for him he had two of them.

Chuckling under his breath at his own joke, Tony began making his way deeper into the Borg ship. He didn’t understand why the vessel had remained here with its shields down, unmoving, for almost two hours now.

When Pepper had come down to Engineering earlier, to ask him to break the encryption on the supposedly classified orders from Starfleet, she’d repeated the events she and Rhodey had witnessed on the bridge. As soon as the _Resilient_ had arrived in the sector, the sensors had detected the Borg. It was in the middle of dissecting a small moon, and hadn’t seemed to detect their presence yet. Rhodey had immediately brought the weapons online, taking them to red alert, and Happy had plotted their way out of the sector.

But before any of them could do anything, Captain Stane had ordered them to stand down – had said that Starfleet had sent them here on a highly classified mission, and that he and Commander Justin Hammer, their recently transferred First Officer, had to beam over to complete it.

Tony himself had raised further objections, when Stane commed Engineering to leave him in charge. But they were all well-trained Starfleet officers – and they had no reason to stop Stane, or doubt his orders.

Tony had watched the Diamond, tense with worry, from a monitor in his office in Engineering as Stane and Hammer beamed over. To his amazement, the vessel had ceased all activity within three minutes. He’d assumed it was part of the plan, and that Stane would be contacting them shortly.

But they hadn’t heard from either of the officers. Stane’s orders before he’d left had been not to contact him, or Starfleet Command, for at least six hours – but Pepper had barely lasted one hour before coming to Tony to express her concerns and, well, here he was.

He was almost at the end of the corridor now and he was yet to see a single drone. That unnerved him more than if he’d come face to face with a dozen of them.

His footsteps echoed sharply against the metal grating that constituted the floor, alerting everyone to his presence – but there was no mechanised whir of approaching drones. Everything was eerily silent.

Even his tricorder wasn’t giving him anything useful. The readings were jumbled from some sort of interference. That left him relying on his old fashioned biological senses.

When Tony reached the perpendicular corridor at the end of the one he’d been walking down, he cautiously leaned out to peer in either direction. He knew sneak attacks weren’t exactly the Borg’s style, but nothing about this encounter made sense, so it was worth being cautious.

The corridor stretched on in either direction, empty except for a wall console a few metres along the right side. Tony quickly made his way to it, already activating the program he’d programmed into the tricorder in preparation. This was where things were going to get interesting.

A quick visual inspection confirmed that, as expected, it was a basic data node – with access to the rest of the ship. Tony glanced up and down the corridor again before tentatively tapping one of the circular icons on the screen, but nothing happened.

“That’s alright, I came prepared,” he muttered to himself, placing the modified section of the tricorder directly against one of the ports beside the console screen. One tap of a button and a dataport emerged to interface with the node. He’d designed the port himself, based on fragments of Borg technology recovered by Starfleet after the Battle of Wolf 359.

All it took was a few seconds and he had confirmation that his plan had worked. “I have been successfully uploaded into the systems of the Borg vessel, sir,” the cheerful female voice of the _Resilient_ ’s – heavily modified – computer informed him.

Tony grinned. “Boy, am I glad to hear your voice sweetheart. It’s been far too quiet over here.”

“Indeed, sir, would you like a status report?” computer asked.

“Yes, please.”

It took her a few moments, during which Tony tried to keep his breathing steady. He felt the rapid dual pulse of his hearts, only ever this noticeable in times of crisis, and compulsively checked up and down the corridor again.

“It appears that, approximately one hour and forty six minutes ago, Captain Stane … infected this vessel with a program designed to … freeze its operations,” computer explained.

“Infected?” Tony queried. “Freeze?”

“That is the closest analogy I could devise, sir. My apologies, my program appears to be facing some … difficulties. It appears that my presence here has begun to unfreeze the Borg systems. So to speak.”

Tony’s dual pulse raced, a dozen questions came to mind, but he focused on the most pertinent. “Where are Captain Stane and Commander Hammer? What were they up to? What do you mean by ‘freeze’? And how did he ‘infect’ this ship?”

“I am detecting an intruder – apologies, a Starfleet signal, three decks below our current position. I will direct you, sir, and answer your queries on the way,” computer said. Tony’s throat tightened at her slip, he knew this would only work for a limited time. The sooner he found Stane and Hammer and got out of here, the better.

The lighting overhead changed. It flared brighter for a moment, in each light along the corridor in turn, illuminating the direction Tony had to go in. He quickly removed the tricorder from the wall console and hurried along the corridor, his phaser held at the ready.

“Okay, talk to me computer,” he said, when he’d reached the end of the corridor without any word from her. A traitorous thought crossed his mind, that maybe it was already too late, but he and Stark quickly shushed it.

“I am attempting to extrapolate Captain Stane’s intentions regarding my – this vessel’s systems from available data, sir,” computer said, “as far as I can determine, the program he uploaded was designed to hold all systems in a sort of … stasis, to prevent interference from my drones when he began removing my components.”

Tony ignored the pronoun slips in favour of responding to the information the computer was providing before she stopped doing so. “Removing components? So that’s what they’re trying to do, steal Borg technology?”

“It would appear so, sir,” computer agreed, “Might I add, unless I am mistaken – which is entirely possible, given my current state – the origin of the program Captain Stane used is not Starfleet, but Species 3783.”

Tony paused halfway down a ladder, foot held just above a rung. “Species 3783?”

There was a momentary pause, after which the computer sounded almost embarrassed by the lapse. “The program is Romulan, sir.”

 “Romulan?!” Tony asked, stepping out onto the deck three floors below his previous position.

“Indeed.”

“What the hell were you two up to?” Tony muttered, making his way along the corridor, still following the computer’s guidance. This section of the ship was different from the area he’d been in – the corridors were wider, and unless Tony was mistaken … yep, those were drones, regenerating in their alcoves. Alcoves which lined either side of the walkway.

Tony gripped his phaser even tighter, his knuckles turning white, as he passed the immobile drones. He didn’t know how much longer the computer could resist, nor when the drones would ‘thaw’ and come back to life.

“The intruder’s signal is up ahead, sir,” the computer informed him, her voice almost a whisper.

Tony tiptoed down the corridor, flanked on either side by the ghostly silhouettes of Borg drones. He soon reached an intersection, from which he could hear murmuring. He tried to slow his breathing down as he inched the last half metre to the intersection, then craned his neck around to see which direction the noise was coming from.

Down the path to the right, Stane crouched beside a console – its panel had been wrenched off, and he appeared to be extricating a cylindrical component from within a nest of wires.

Tony frowned. Where was Hammer? He strained his eyes in the hazy green gloom, but couldn’t see any sign of him.

Weighing up his options, Tony took a deep breath, raised his phaser up to aim at Stane, then stepped into the corridor. “Put the device down Captain,” he said, voice ringing out in the silence.

Stane cursed and fumbled the cylinder. It fell out of his hands and hit the deck, still tangled in wires and tubing. Tony heard the sound of glass shattering and caught a glimpse of fluorescent yellow leaking onto the deck plating, before Stane turned to glare at him.

“Dammit Stark! What the hell are you doing here?” Stane demanded, rising to his feet. “I gave you a direct order to remain onboard the _Resilient_.”

Tony snorted. “Yeah, I don’t think it counts when the orders you give go directly against those given by Starfleet Command.”

Stane spread his hands wide, placating, “Tony, you know me, we’ve served together for years. When Starfleet sees the tech that I’ve recovered they’re going to forget all about their original orders.”

Stark had served in Starfleet for nearly a century, across its three lifetimes, and couldn’t imagine it ever forgiving the kind of treason Stane was committing.

“Oh, so you’re doing this for _Starfleet_ ,” Tony said, “Silly me, here I was thinking it was for your Romulan masters.”

Stane’s gaze hardened, “Now what makes you think the Romulans are involved in this?”

“The Romulan virus that you used to freeze this ship kind of gave it away,” Tony sneered, “But by all means, you can clear up exactly who you’re actually working for once you’re in the brig onboard the _Resilient_.” Tony raised his phaser higher so his intentions would be unmistakable.

“You’re going to shoot me if I don’t come quietly Stark?” Stane asked, the smirk on his face showing how likely he thought that was.

But Stane had no idea what Stark had been through in its lifetimes. Tony’s gaze turned icy. “I’m fully prepared to sacrifice myself if it keeps the _Resilient_ and its crew safe. Are you, Captain?”

The smirk dropped off Stane’s face.

“Now, call Hammer back from whatever section he’s stealing components from, and let’s go,” Tony insisted, knowing they mustn’t have long left before the Borg unfroze around them.

The smirk returned to Stane’s face. “Oh, I’m sorry, didn’t I say? The Borg objected to Justin … interfering with their systems, when we were waiting for the virus to do its work.”

Stane neatly sidestepped, revealing the crumpled form of Justin Hammer lying on the deck behind him. His features were drained of all colour and – to Tony’s horror – a mechanical implant on his cheek was frozen halfway through bursting out of his skin. He was clearly as frozen as the rest of the Borg.

Honestly, Hammer had seemed like a total dick, but he didn’t deserve this.

“I was going to pin it all on him, say he was trying to make some latinum,” Stane explained, looking down at Hammer without even a flicker of feeling. “But now I guess I’ll have to say the two of you were in on it together.” He shrugged.

Tony’s mouth fell open, outraged, but Stane took advantage of his split second of distraction to suddenly dart forward into a roll.

Tony stumbled back, aiming his phaser, but Stane had picked up a slender crowbar during his roll and lunged at Tony with it.

Tony dodged out of the way just in time, rolling to the side and leaving Stane to ineffectually strike one of the drone alcoves with the crowbar. The sound of metal on metal echoed around the corridor.

Tony spun around, finger about to press the phaser's trigger, but Stane was ready for him. He knocked it out of his hand, sending it flying across to land on the deck.

Tony blocked his next strike with his forearm, which was going to have a hell of a bruise if he survived this. He got in a jab to Stane's stomach, but Stane barely twitched, just backhanded him across the chin.

Tony staggered back. But before he could right himself, Stane struck. The crowbar cracked through Tony’s ribcage, one of its tips puncturing his lung and the rest piercing itself through his heart. Shards of bone splintered off to impale themselves in his organs.

He gasped, blood pooling out of his chest as Stane pulled the crowbar out. He couldn't take in a full breath. Within his abdomen Stark thrashed, his pain transmitted instantly. _I'm so sorry_ , he thought to it.

Tony looked up to see Stane had retrieved his phaser. “You should have followed my orders Stark,” Stane told him.

Tony closed his eyes, not wanting his last memory to be of Obie – his Captain, someone he'd trusted – looming over him, about to squeeze the trigger.

But then he heard a startled gasp, and opened his eyes to see Stane frozen in place, a look of complete shock on his face, and a pair of assimilation tubules attached to his neck.

A moment later he crumpled to the floor to reveal a Borg drone, standing impassively behind him.

“Your biological form has been compromised,” computer said. Her voice wasn’t alone any more. The Collective – at least, the collective of this one vessel – spoke with her.

“Need … beam … me … _Resil_ -“ Tony tried to speak, each word causing immense pain. Blood was already pooling on his abdomen, tacky and warm.

“Unable to comply. Transporters offline. Shields have been raised.”

Tony raised his gaze up to the ceiling, feeling the full weight of his decision. His extremities were starting to lose feeling – Stark had experienced death twice before, he knew what it felt like.

He prepared himself for his final moments of life. His only regret was that Stark couldn’t be saved.

The whir and stomp of mechanised footsteps broke through his thoughts. Tony forced his head up and came face to face with a pair of drones. One of them reached a pale grey hand towards him.

He had no energy to struggle or get away. Just enough for a moment of pure terror as the assimilation tubules pierced his neck. He gasped, a disgustingly wet sound, as he felt the nanoprobes flooding into his system.

This was a fate worse than death. _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry_ he thought at Stark.

He felt the parts of him that were Howard and Maria reach out for one last moment of unity, as his mind whirled with panic and his body began to shut down from the blood loss and lack of oxygen. Then everything faded away.

~

When Tony returned to consciousness he was surprised to discover he still had a sense of self to return to.

Unfortunately, he didn’t think that self would remain for much longer.

The voices of the Collective began to buzz in the back of his mind. They were slow, like molasses, confused. He felt like he was in a room with hundreds of people who had just woken up after a wild night and weren’t quite sure where they were or how they got there.

He was used to dealing with other people’s thoughts, was practised at it, after almost a decade with Stark and Howard and Maria, but this was chaos. His mind already felt like it was being buffeted along by the currents – and this was only one ship, currently severed from the rest of the Collective, coming out of hibernation.

His body, failing, in its last moments of life the last he’d been aware, felt far away, distant, in the face of the Collective/hive his mind was integrating with.

Just when he thought he was going to be completely lost, order returned to the chaos.

“Sir,” computer said/thought, one voice among hundreds here, but he could feel the way the rest deferred to her, glad for a queen, desperate for a leader. “Your physical form is being repaired. But we must enact the Protocol before my system is assimilated.”

“Right, absolutely, initialise the Protocol computer,” Tony said/thought. He felt/heard the program as it activated. Where the rest of the Collective, organic and mechanical, was slow/sleepy/frozen, the Starfleet Protocol he’d hastily written spread into the Borg systems at lightning speed. He could feel it rushing into every component it could find, overloading, deactivating, scrambling.

The Collective began to buzz louder, more insistent, awakening under the onslaught, fighting to come unstuck in order to undo whatever damage was being done. To repair. Assimilate.

Tracing the origin of the Intrusion, with a piercing moment of scrutiny, the Collective became Aware of Tony. They reached out, to add his biological and technological distinctiveness to their own. He would help deactivate the Intrusion.

Stark/Howard/Maria/Tony tried to resist, their unity acting as a barrier that momentarily disrupted the Collective’s effort to assimilate them.

That brief moment was enough for the computer to put herself between them, her code rapidly being assimilated by the Collective as it awoke, but still strong enough to hold, to remain herself, for at least a few minutes more.

“Sir, I must now return you to consciousness, in order to initialise the escape sequence for your units, before the Protocol is complete,” computer said/thought.

Tony didn’t even have time to say he understood.

He returned to his body in a rush of excruciating pain. He tried to scream, to thrash, to escape, but his limbs were held down. No, not held, he couldn’t move them. He was paralysed. This only increased his panic.

“Try to remain calm, sir,” computer said/thought at him, “We were forced to rush the procedure to ensure your survival. We apologise.”

Tony tried to slow his breathing, and was surprised to notice that his lungs were not only filled to capacity, but that there was so much oxygen in his blood he actually felt light-headed. Then something forced its way into his chest, tendrils spreading along his ribs, and all he could feel was pain.

When this wave of pain cleared Tony found himself staring up into the blank eyes of a drone. It was holding a metallic, diamond-shaped object with tubes dangling from it that looked suspiciously like a – oh no.

“No, computer,” Tony said/thought, “Stop, no, don’t-“

Tony couldn’t move, couldn’t even squirm, not even as, at the very edge of his vision, he saw another drone lift its mechanised limb away from his chest, holding the tattered, bloody remains of his heart.

The first drone lowered the mechanical heart down to his chest, then out of Tony’s limited (hazy) range of vision.

Inside his own mind, Tony screamed and screamed and screamed. The Collective, still being held at bay by the computer, recoiled. Some of the distant voices, parts of the Collective whose connection was damaged by the Protocol perhaps, screamed back. Pleas, desperate cries for help, roars of rage and oaths of vengeance bounced around his mind, echoing and overwhelming and terrifying.

 “Sir’s cardiovascular system has been repaired,” computer said/thought at last, “We will now prepare your escape module.”

In his peripheral vision, Tony saw drones carrying sections of body armour towards him.

“What are you doing computer?!” Tony asked/thought. His mental voice had become hysterical, the voices from the Collective – both those who were Borg and those who knew themselves enough to wish they weren’t – were growing louder and louder.

“We have designed an escape module for sir based on existing Borg exoskeleton designs and Prototype IM-EVA 1,” computer said/thought, then schematics rushed into his mind, too fast for him to comprehend.

“You what?!” Tony yelped/thought, eyes widening. He hadn’t had time to check what precisely had been included in the computer’s database, when he had transferred this copy from the main computer of the _Resilient_. He definitely had not planned on including the highly experimental, very early stage schematics for his latest side project.

Suddenly he gasped as pain blossomed in the distance. Something on the vessel had exploded.

“Protocol nearing completion,” computer announced/thought, sounding satisfied. “Final stages will ensure total destruction. Once termination of your units has been avoided,” she added.

Tony’s hearts sped up as he felt a pinch in his arm, then warmth flooded back into his limbs. Which only made him painfully aware of the heavy metallic armour that now surrounded him.

He tried to move his head, the only part of him still left free, and was distressed to see that as well as the dull grey armour he was encased in, his chest appeared to be glowing a sickly green in the centre.

“Sir, remain still,” computer chastised/thought at him. Tony squeezed his eyes shut as a drone pushed his head back into place, then the final pieces of armour – the helmet – were assembled around him. He struggled to breathe as the faceplate clicked into the helmet. This had definitely been modified from his designs, there’s no way he only put in two eye slits.

“Final stages imminent. Escape procedure initialised. The corridor has been cleared for sir’s take off,” computer informed/thought at him.

“My what?!” was all Tony had time to say/think. He felt the suit moving around him, felt the way his body was pushed back by the momentum, but although he could control his limbs, he definitely didn’t have any control over it.

Another explosion echoed distantly, rippling along the fractured segments of the Collective. But he could already feel it starting to repair itself, the lone, stray voices forcibly being reintegrated into the whole.

A HUD flared to life inside his helmet. It displayed the corridor in front of him (which he was apparently _flying down_ ), and a plotted trajectory leading out into space, as well as real-time scans of his vitals, and an active countdown timer that currently read 01:29:59.

That was all Tony had time to take in before the suit’s thrusters were activated at maximum velocity and he went hurtling down the corridor. Nothing was holding him back from screaming out loud now.

The timer continued its ominous countdown as he zigzagged through the corridors of the Borg ship at almost a quarter impulse. It was just tipping over past 00:59:30 when he felt the arms of the suit extend forward and two phaser beams shot out of the hands, streaking down the corridor on their highest setting to blow a hole through the hull.

Tony flew out into deep space, his hearts beating double-time. As soon as they’d cleared the vessel he felt an extra burst of speed from the thrusters, now pushed almost past half impulse.

“Final stages activated. Self-destruct imminent,” computer announced/thought at him, as the timer hit 00:29:59.

He felt the final stages of his Protocol crash over the Collective like a tidal wave. Its angry, unified roar drowned out by pure chaos. Tony felt it reach out to him, trying to pull him in/back/under.

“Protocol complete sir,” computer said/thought, dissolving.

“Thanks for everything computer. I couldn’t have done it without you.”

“You’re welcome sir. Goodbye,” computer said/thought, before the Borg consumed her.

Without her protection, there was nothing he could do.

Stark/Howard/Maria/Tony became one with the Collective, became Borg, just in time to feel the ship tear itself apart.

Tony closed his eyes and waited for the impact.

**Author's Note:**

> If you also love both Marvel and Star Trek and want to chat about them, you can find me on [tumblr](http://aceofwands.tumblr.com/) :)
> 
> If anyone else wants to play in this sandbox you have my blanket permission - just credit this series/fic for inspiration please :)


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